Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

 "The blood-stained history of the 17th-century settling of the Northeast has long been relegated to a fairy tale about Thanksgiving and a rock (everything you learned about the Pilgrims in grade school is turkey feathers!). National Book Award winner Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex ) now gives us a story of both heartbreaking misery and driving determination as he relates the Pilgrims' historic journey from Europe and their hardscrabble work to establish the Plymouth Colony. They faced the threat of starvation, illness, and the savage winter (half ultimately died) and, 50 years later, bloody wars against the Indians. Philbrick's Pilgrims are Taliban-like fanatics whose faith also is their politics. Far from the promised land of plenty, New England proved a dangerous, decimated, death-ridden coast ravaged by disease and civil war that claimed as much as 90 percent of the local population, and its soil was so overfarmed that it was as lifeless as stone. Familiar names get new faces: mercenary Miles Standish is a New World Rambo, quick to steal, kill, and behead, and native interpreter Squanto is a deceitful manipulator with his own political agenda. Fast-forward five decades to an overcrowded cluster of colonies pushing the Indians, who saved the Pilgrim forbears from certain death, to the point where the now well-armed natives have little choice but to push back hard in battles generating more carnage than D-day. Mayflower is a jaw-dropping epic of heroes and villains, bravery and bigotry, folly and forgiveness. Philbrick delivers a masterly told story that will appeal to lay readers and history buffs alike. Clearly one of the year's best books; highly recommended. [LJ 1/06.]--Michael Rogers,Library Journal [Page 108]." Check Catalog

Hallmark: A Century of Caring

A century ago, the Halls were a poverty-stricken family trying to make their way in a small Nebraska town. Today, they are a golden example of a family that has created a groundbreaking company. Hallmark: A Century of Caring is the inspirational story of an American dream brought to life through hard work, strong values, and a genuine care for both employees and customers.
Beginning with a heartfelt introduction from famed poet Maya Angelou, the reader is taken on a journey that follows the Hall family from Norfolk, Nebraska, to Kansas City, Missouri, the eventual home of Hallmark. Through boom times, war times, and the Great Depression, the company grew and flourished, always with the belief that its products and services must enrich people's lives. One hundred years after Joyce Hall first stepped off of the train in Kansas City, Hallmark is poised and ready for the future. This book is an enduring salute to the company and a historic journal of a truly iconic American company.
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Darwin in Galapagos: Footsteps to a New World

Drawing from Charles Darwin's original notebooks and logs, the latest findings by scholars and researchers and their own intimate knowledge of the Galapagos Islands, the authors recreate the scientist's historic visit to the archipelago, following in his footsteps day by day as he records all he observes.
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The Good Soldiers

It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. He called it the surge. “Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences,” he told a skeptical nation. Among those listening were the young, optimistic army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers. About to head to a vicious area of Baghdad, they decided the difference would be them.
Fifteen months later, the soldiers returned home forever changed. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter David Finkel was with them in Bagdad, and almost every grueling step of the way.
What was the true story of the surge? And was it really a success? Those are the questions he grapples with in his remarkable report from the front lines. Combining the action of Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down with the literary brio of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, The Good Soldiers is an unforgettable work of reportage. And in telling the story of these good soldiers, the heroes and the ruined, David Finkel has also produced an eternal tale—not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.
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Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal

Challenges popular beliefs about dire food shortages, outlining possible solutions based on actual western-world consumption, in a report that tours the world's food industry to reveal how hunger issues could be amply addressed by strategically adjusting production and distribution practices.
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Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker

Traces the history of poker from its origins in China, the Middle East and Europe to its ascent as a global phenomenon, offering additional insight into the game's considerable role in American culture. By the best-selling author of Positively Fifth Street.
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The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind

This book is an intellectual tour de force: a comprehensive Darwinian interpretation of human development. Looking at the entire range of human evolutionary history, Melvin Konner tells the compelling and complex story of how cross-cultural and universal characteristics of our growth from infancy to adolescence became rooted in genetically inherited characteristics of the human brain.
All study of our evolution starts with one simple truth: human beings take an extraordinarily long time to grow up. What does this extended period of dependency have to do with human brain growth and social interactions? And why is play a sign of cognitive complexity, and a spur for cultural evolution? As Konner explores these questions, and topics ranging from bipedal walking to incest taboos, he firmly lays the foundations of psychology in biology.
As his book eloquently explains, human learning and the greatest human intellectual accomplishments are rooted in our inherited capacity for attachments to each other. In our love of those we learn from, we find our way as individuals and as a species. Never before has this intersection of the biology and psychology of childhood been so brilliantly described.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," wrote Dobzhansky. In this remarkable book, Melvin Konner shows that nothing in childhood makes sense except in the light of evolution.
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A Week in December

A novel set in 2007 London follows seven diverse characters, exploring the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life and culminating in a climax where each character is forced to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit. By the author of Devil May Care.
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My Wife's Affair

Moving to London with his wife and three children, failed writer Peter witnesses the blossoming of his wife's acting career and her increasing obsession with her portrayal of a famous 18th-century actress, a situation that culminates in a tragic infidelity.
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Adirondack Trails With Tales: History Hikes Through the Adirondack Park and the Lake George, Lake Champlain & Mohawk Valley Regions

Hike, paddle, bike, or cross-country ski along beautiful trails through sites made famous by Adirondack guides, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, colonial settlers, and combatants in the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars. Visit abandoned iron mines and the ruins of tanneries, famous Adirondack great camps and old resorts, lost villages, Native American battlegrounds, and the homestead of John Brown, catalyst for the Civil War. Visit the scene of America's first naval battle and marvel at geological wonders like Indian Pass, Canajoharie Gorge, Chimney Mountain, and the tufa caves of Van Hornesville. Detailed directions, maps, photographs, and vintage postcards.Hikes include: Valcour Island, Coon Mountain, Crown Point: Fort St. Frederic & His Majesty's Fort of Crown Point, Fort Ticonderoga, Ironville & Penfield Homestead, Rock Pond, Rogers Rock, Shelving Rock Mountain & Shelving Rock Falls, Prospect Mountain, Fort George and Bloody Pond, Cooper's Cave & Betar Byway, John Brown's Farm, Mt. Jo & Mt. Van Hoevenberg, Adirondac & Indian Pass, East Branch of the Ausable River & Adirondack Mountain Reserve, Santanoni, The Sagamore, Paul Smiths, Hooper Garnet Mine, Chimney Mountain, Kunjamuk Cave, Griffin, Griffin Falls, & Auger Falls, Moss Island, Tufa Caves & Waterfalls of Van Hornesville, Canajoharie Gorge, Wolf Hollow.
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Lists for Life: The Essential Guide to Getting Organized and Tackling Tough To-Dos

Contains over 100 checklists, resources, and suggestions to help you stay organized through life's transitions and stressful situations.
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James May's Toy Stories

Relates the stories behind a number of classic toys as well as the adventures of the author and his child and adult helpers in the summer of 2009 as they built and recreated a number of toys, in a book that also offers 12 projects linked to these toys for parents and children to create themselves.
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Unseen Academicals

The wizards of Unseen University in the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed forever.
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